Fester Builds A Raised Bed

Being boomers born or brought up in fifties austerity, Fester and I seldom throw away anything that might prove useful.  So when we had our laminate kitchen flooring replaced the old stuff went into the garage.  A couple of years ago Fester had the bright idea of using it to make raised beds.  Here's how we did it.

from facebook Friday 27 March ·

 

First you use a spade to make slits in the lawn and shove the bits of flooring in.

 

Cutting a bit of flooring for the end.

Yes I made that pullover. 

He's an entomologist and the red things are beetles. The ones on the green are ground beetles, those on the blue are water beetles. We had fun creating the motifs.

 

Hammering in halved rocking chair legs to hold the flooring in place.
 

Surprisingly he only hit himself once.

 The neighbours got a little worried when they saw the first flooring bed he made last year. 
They know us better now.   

While we were working on this, they had their lunch al fresco and we had a nice (socially distanced) conversation over our shared fence.  The phrase ‘lockdown survivalists’ was coined.  

 All I’m saying is, we should have plenty of parsnips to barter come Christmas.

After the contents of the wormarium* were put in, we got a strong young person to shovel in the compost from our first ever raised bed (behind him) which actually was a bed - a storage divan that had seen better times.

  

A good watering and it's all ready for planting. The back bed has parsnips, carrots and lettuce; the newest bed parsnips (we like parsnips), beetroot, spring onion and radish.

Mrs Leftfooter I spotted the jumper straight away. Still looking good.

Bazoukiboy Those DIY skills finally come out 😆

Ms Marx Thanks for posting this, Brenda. I'd been telling the good gentleman ceramicist him indoors about how productive your garden is, so now I could show him. Now, of course, he wants to put a trough in the middle of our garden!

Bentonbag It saves on mowing, and unless you're going to play football, tennis or bowls or do a lot of sunbathing I don't see the point of a big lawn. We still have some bits of flooring and broken chair if he wants some.

Kentishlady Thank you, I have been trying to work out how the rocking chair bits were to be used. It makes sense now!

*I'll tell you about the wormarium tomorrow